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| Peo just had her first ever dose of Monty Python. We showed her the Ministry of Silly Walks sketch. She giggled several times and declared the walks very silly. When we asked her what she thought of it afterwards, she said, "It was a bit too silly." But later she confirmed she liked it anyway. Then she pointed to a screen shot of the Inquisition on the DVD box and asked to see that. She is currently having a mega-tantrum because we said no. Well, and because it's bedtime. | ||||||
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Blatherings
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June 28th, 2009
June 21st, 2009
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| Peo's teacher told Corran on Friday that her reading has impressed the older kids at school. Peo thinks this is great because the big kids praised her...pretty much manna from heaven for a littler kid. Unfortunately, the teacher also told Corran that some of the older kids were also starting to show signs of competitiveness with Peo over it. Peo hasn't noticed. She's too happy. Here's to hoping it doesn't go ugly in any way. This teacher is really good at this sort of thing, so we are indeed hopeful. But when I mentioned it to a knitting friend who works for the local gifted association, there was a lot of nodding and dire hmm-hmming because this can be the precursor for harsh judgment. And let's be clear about this: nobody said the dreaded G-word to these kids, nobody elevated Peo in any way, nobody did any of those things that the parents of gifted kids get accused of. Heck, Corran and I haven't even met most of these kids, since Peo gets dropped off earlier and picked up later than most. All that happened was Peo read in front of them. | ||||||
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June 11th, 2009
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| Been meaning to mention this milestone for a few days... Peo successfully kept her undies dry during nap time for two whole weeks, so as per the agreement we made with her, she then got some pull-ups/training pants for night time. There were only two in her size at the store, but she's kept them dry ALL NIGHT more often than not, so it's working out okay right now. That means the nappy load Corran has in the washer right now is probably the last load until the next kid. Woohoo! And Peo has been getting much praise and goodies for her sudden leap into the world of potty training! Yay! | ||||||
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June 1st, 2009
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| I keep meaning to post this but always remember at the wrong time until just now... As of a week or so ago, we're willing to say that Peo is absolutely, undeniably, full-out reading. We have suspected she could do it for some time...last fall at a Biscuit Brothers concert she asked me what "klah-roo" meant and it took me a moment to realize she was reading the call letters for the local PBS station, KLRU. Around the same time she took a book she had never seen before, sent by Grandma, and read it fully on her own (granted, the pictures assisted her in guessing some words but it was clearly more than describing the pictures). I think I grabbed the camera and took video of that but I'm so far behind in photo/video sorting that I can't quite remember. But many examples of her reading until recently could have been brushed aside as mere rote, and indeed, some of the unpleasant people we've encountered in the negative playgroup I've mentioned before loved to cite it as such when Peo would spontaneously read in front of them. Also, she still frequently refuses to perform on command and gets worried when asked to read because, I suspect, she fears that nobody will read to her anymore if she can do it herself. (Mind you, as I'm posting this, she's trying to show off some reading to Corran because he's busy cooking and she wants his attention.) So until recently, we've been fairly sure she could do some sight-reading but couldn't prove it, especially in the face of nasty nay-sayers. But then a week or so ago, she was in a snit and wanted to watch a specific episode of Ni-Hao Ki-Lan on the DVR and we didn't have that episode avaiable. She insisted that we check each recorded episode to prove that we didn't have the one she wanted. As we scrolled through the list, whenever a title was shown, she'd shout, "No, I don't want [name of epiosode]!". Granted, on a couple of them the screen shot next to the listing showed a scene that made the episode obvious. But most of the time it was the title screen showing, and she was clearly reading the words. She has also been reading signs while out in the car, labels on jars/cans/toothpaste tubes, etc. She doesn't always get complicated words right, but after seeing a LeapFrog video from the library that taught her about how a silent E makes the previous vowel say its name, she handles most words quite well (and has demanded that I knit a silent E machine for her Fisher Price Little People). So in a nutshell, Peo can read. She can read new words by sounding them out even in the absence of pictures or other context. Yay! Well except for wanting to tell Corran about ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} nightxade's trip to the zoo in code...I had to describe it as the "last letter double vowel place" and let him work it out...and frankly I bet Peo could guess that too if she had been paying attention... | ||||||
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May 27th, 2009
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| In happier news, Peo has finally decided she prefers to poop in the potty rather than diapers. Suddenly a bunch of stuff we'd tried before came together to be enough enticement, plus she's now allowed to get up from bed to go to the washroom. Ah, yes, she's discovered that by going just a little bit, she gets rewards and praise, and then can prolong bedtime by coming back out every five minutes to do more. We let her get away with it the first night because we were just so happy that she was willing to do it at all. Now we've had to institute rules about how soon/often she can get out of bed to go to the loo. She doesn't like that but thankfully it has not yet occurred to her to punish us by deliberately pooping her pants or anything like that. Funniest moment: she comes running out of the bathroom half-naked and squealing, "Daddy! I made a poo and it's bigger than YOUR HEAD!" (it was apparently impressive but not bigger than Corran's head) So hopefully she'll be out of diapers entirely soon. The current deal is if she can nap in underwear without wetting for two whole weeks, she gets to go buy training pants for overnight. We don't expect overnight perfection for some time. Yayyyyyyyyy! | ||||||
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April 23rd, 2009
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| Forgot to mention that the other day, Peo wrote her name all by herself for the first time! I think she has better manual dexterity and confidence with the thick, egg-shaped sidewalk chalk than with regular pencils/crayons etc. Yay! | ||||||
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April 22nd, 2009
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| I helped Peo get her pants and undies down and get up onto the potty chair. Then I went into my room to wait for her to be done, as usual. A minute later she came running into my room squealing and naked. I asked, "Why are you naked?" She replied, "Because I NUDE IT!" Then giggled and ran back into the bathroom. Someone is becoming very punny. | ||||||
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February 19th, 2009
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| Peo seems to have had a good first day of school. She was all smiles when we got there, although it quickly turned to anger and tears as she tried to put the toy dogs away and another kid, concerned that she was doing it wrong, started to do it for her, and that made her flip out...no doubt exacerbated by fatigue and the fact that we were there. The teacher says she had a good day, was apparently a natural in the Spanish class, and actually did nap. It's always funny to me when other adults try to explain Peo oddities to me, though, as if I don't know. The teacher wanted me to know that Peo was really calm and happily focused on a repetitive, hands-on, pseudo-experimental task (using a sponge to take water from one container and fill another). I said yeah, she loves that kind of thing, and mentioned the sticker obsession. But the teacher emphasized it again, like she'd magically found the secret key to Peo happiness and was letting me on in the secret. It's not like I don't know...the problem is I can't always give Peo the interesting task if I need her to eat food or take a nap or I'm trying to do dishes or laundry or cook dinner. We never have behavioural problems DURING craft time, just before and after. The teacher also seemed surprised at how much food Peo can pack away into her tiny self (according to the Wii Fit, she's still hovering around 27 lbs). We got her a bento-style lunch kit and it warned against overfilling it. Hahahahahaha. I filled it. Peo ate almost all of it and the teacher was shocked, especially since they'd done cooking in Spanish class and apparently Peo ate wayyyyyy more than any other kid. Again, it's funny to have these things explained to me in a "did you know she could eat that much" sort of way... We realized that that was the longest Peo and I have ever been apart. Freaky. If I hadn't been busy all day I might have noticed more. But what was really weird was trying to get Peo to tell us about her day. See, for all that Peo's smart and fairly well-spoken for her age, she still doesn't get that you have to explain all the details to someone who wasn't there. So she'll randomly tell pieces of stories and I'm used to filling in the extra bits for Corran, or him for me when he takes her on hikes without me. But this time she's telling us bits and pieces and neither of us was there, so it was a lot of guesswork. We gleaned that she had fun with a Mr. Potato Head (I never got around to getting one for our house), changing it into Santa and then a Queen who is named Mr. Queen. She played with another kid in the playground who we think might also be the one who was "helping" her put the toys away at the end of the day, and she told us his name and some other stuff about him. She also told us that the teacher took her animal blanket away during nap time and when we asked why, she said because she was playing with it instead of sleeping, but that if she doesn't play with it next time then she can have it back. And after all that, she calmly said she didn't want to tell us any more, because she was tired and wanted music on the radio instead. Fair enough. Oh, and on potty issues: the teacher didn't use a diaper on her at nap time since she was going pee in the toilet just fine, so Peo did what she always does when not given a diaper: she held in her poop all day. As soon as she got a diaper for bedtime tonight, le poop. So we'll see how that goes. It was a really long day for her so we're going to see how this schedule goes for a bit, and then adjust as necessary. This school is super laid-back about arrival and leaving times (versus some others we looked into which are frickin' SCARY timekeepers!!), but for now I like the idea of Corran taking her to and from his way to work. Now I am exhausted and going to bed, because another full day of cake work awaits tomorrow... | ||||||
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| We just dropped Peo off for her first day at preschool. I thought I'd get misty-eyed because I had been all week while I got her stuff ready, but nah, actually, I'm good. :) The weirdest thing is now being in the house alone, I have this constant urge to turn on the monitor because usually if I'm alone downstairs, it means Peo's upstairs "napping" and I turn on the monitor. I think noiseinmyhead said something recently about the quiet...it is quiet right now, but once I get to work on the cake again in a few minutes, I'll have the TV on and I can put it on as loud as my deaf ears want without worrying that it will prevent Peo from sleeping. Yayyyyyy! Or I can listen to podcasts on my ipod in the kitchen. Yayyyyyy! | ||||||
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January 11th, 2009
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| It begins... Corran taught Peo how to play "the story-telling game" this morning using plastic RPG minis and one of the giant D20s. He went fairly rules-free, kind of fudge-like, with no paper or anything. Now she wants more play with her "guy", whom she has named "Time to Time" (we don't know why, but it makes me think of Mr. Teatime from Discworld, to which she has not been exposed) and said was 17 years old (Corran says the die was sitting at 17 when he asked if there was anything else about her guy she wanted to describe). Corran asked her vague attributes and she decided Time to Time is very strong and very smart but not very tricky. Good to know she's not predisposed yet to trying to max out everything. And then together they made up an elaborate story about a king whose gold was stolen by a goblin who took it to his cave and Time to Time needed to get it back. There was tickling and asking "please" involved at various points. I guess we'll have to see about a kid-friendly RPG system sooner than we thought... | ||||||
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December 17th, 2008
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| ( potty training stuff, cut for those who don't want TMI ) | ||||||
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December 5th, 2008
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| Another day with the pattern confirmed: Peo got play this morning, but no significant intellectual stimulation (as in learning something new, having to solve a highly challenging puzzle, or having to think creatively for a new type of craft), so she did hitting and tantruming. She didn't hit any other kids, which was good, but she hit toys and walls. Tomorrow's going to be very busy, so I don't know how much directed education she'll get unless Corran does something with her. I've got my knitting group in the morning, then the resale shop I like is having a sale and Peo needs some pants*, and then I have to hurry home so she can have an early nap because we have a birthday party to go to at 4, which is usually during her nap. And it's at Chuck E Cheese, which experience tells me will wind her up and overstimulate her and she'll be in freaky meltdown mode by bedtime. * Peo did wear big girl underpants all day except for nap time, and was very good at going potty at the playdate host's house and at Costco, plus at home. So that's really cool. But there are two drawbacks: 1) I had to go to great effort for the last three years to buy pants wide enough in the bum and waist to accommodate her big cloth diapers. This means now all of her pants are too loose in the bum when put over thin underwear. We've dug out some older pants (12 months and 18 months sizes seem to fit, that's how skinny she is) that stay up, but they're mostly a bit too short in the leg. 2) Because she still won't poop in the potty, she's holding in all of her poop until she's in diapers for nap time, and then it's a poop flood, preventing her from napping and in some cases causing a huge mess to clean up (so no, I'm not inclined to put her in the underwear for the nap because damnit, it's sucky enough to have to clean up what's leaked out of the nappy when I'm TRYING TO HAVE MY LUNCH, plus the day she ended up skipping nap and had the underpants on most of the day, she just didn't poop all day so don't for one second imagine that she won't hold it in if I try to manipulate her). | ||||||
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November 29th, 2008
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| Almost forgot in my fatigue haze... It's Peo's Pi Birthday today! She's 3.14 years old. She just declared, "I'm so old!" | ||||||
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November 5th, 2008
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| 1) I am developing a new little, quick knitted toy pattern and hope to have it posted this afternoon or tomorrow. It'll be free. It's holiday related. 2) I tried to explain the election to Peo yesterday but stopped when she just got upset when informed that the lawn signs with all of those delicious letters and words to sound out would be coming down soon. I also stopped short of explaining why it was auspicious that a black man might be about to win, because I decided I'd rather have her grow up in a world where that isn't auspicious at all, but something totally natural and possible. And now it is. 3) Besides, Peo's favourite thing about all of this besides the lawn signs was running around saying, "OBAMAMAMAMBAMABAMAMMMMMMMMMMMMA!" So now she can have at least four years of hearing the name on NPR and in household discussion and giggle it as much as she likes. 4) Speaking of Peo and literacy, yesterday she was making random-letter "words" on her magnet board and discovered that she can't pronounce her new "words" without cramming in some vowels now and then. Totally figured that out by herself. I think this means she's not Welsh. ;D 5) We watched Obama's speech and I do like how inclusive he is; mentioning gay and straight people, addressing other nations (it's amazing how many Americans, particularly politicians, seem to forget that there are some!), promising to be for everyone, etc. I also liked his realism in terms of saying that some goals may not even happen in a single term (already campaigning for the next one, eh?). He's very good at speaking and has high charisma. Obviously that's a significant part of what got him elected. I still remain doubtful about significant positive change, but I'll be very happy to say I was wrong if any of it happens. I just don't think that he's going to take the profit out of health care, which is what's needed to fix it. Nor do I think he's going to grant gay marriage rights (oiiii, Prop 8, breaking my heart over there...). 6) Speaking of Prop 8, wtf happens to those who were already married? Forced annulment? Can they sue if that happens? Could that actually result in forcing it to a federal level? And what about going to Canada, getting married there, coming back and poking the international treaty about recognizing marriage? Because if the US doesn't honour that treaty, that's going to go very badly for a lot of people (a significant section of Las Vegas' economy will die if people from other countries can no longer have their Vegas weddings recognized back home). Oh, and I just love how much the Mormons were behind the Prop 8 thing. Nice. As Jon Stewart pointed out, these are a people who founded a whole state to protect their marriage choices, but fuck anyone else who wants a different choice, right? GAHHHH. And anyone non-white who voted for Prop 8 (or any similar ban in other states) needs an educational smack in the head because duh, this is the same language that used to prevent mixed-race marriages. You voted for institutionalized bigotry at the same time the nation broke down a barrier of bigotry, you idiots. Sick. | ||||||
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November 2nd, 2008
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| Here's a fun milestone...Peo barfed for the first time today (not including infant spitup). She didn't otherwise seem sick (although I have been all day), but all of a sudden during dinner, there it was. Scared her a bit, I think. Gave her a bath and she asked for Halloween candy. Seems fine now, although she's coughed in her sleep a couple of times. I think we'll stay home and take things easy tomorrow as much as that's possible... | ||||||
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October 26th, 2008
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| Part 2 of the January photo post: 21 photos and links to 2 movies (one of them is the Pi one!!), covering January 13 through 31. ( Read more... ) That's all for January. I hope to catch up with the rest of the months in the next few weeks. | ||||||
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October 22nd, 2008
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| Peo just had her three-year doctor's appointment. As expected, the doctor said it's not unusual for a kid that bright and active to be trouble in terms of questioning/circumventing rules and all of that. She suggested some tactics for dealing with the hitting but nothing we haven't tried, and when I told her the outcome of the various attempts, she eventually said that it looks like Peo is really smart and very good at figuring out all of the standard tricks. She suggested getting her into some kind of classes to direct her energy, and I've been planning to do that. At first we had to wait for the Vegas house to sell though, so we missed the first semester for this year. But there's a music class that I think will be very good for her and it's at a reasonable cost, and the first day I can sign up is next Monday. That school has a class where parents are there with the kids, and then one where the kids are left there (although only for 45 minutes so it's not like I'd have time to go do much). I'm thinking of starting with the one where I'm there and if all goes well, in the spring doing the one where she's left there. I also want to look into some kind of non-competitive gymnastics/tumbling classes. The doctor was suggesting Montessori but when Corran and I looked into it, there were good and bad things about that, so that'll require more consideration. Also, I'm not keen on any full-day things because Peo will have to be in disposables while there and every time we use a disposable we reset potty training. Anyway, Peo's still low on the weight end but tall. She's 27.2 lbs which is 25th percentile (or lower) and 38 inches which is 75th percentile. I thought for sure she'd be over 30 lbs by now, but maybe she just seems heavy lately because I've been tired and ill. Oh, and in the exam room there was a mural with cats doing aerobics. Peo excitedly identified several words without spelling them out first, including: and, the, cat, for, and a cat's shirt that said, "Dance to the music". So when the doctor asked if she was speaking in full sentences, I thought it was fair to say she can spell whole sentences. Plus I found a good way to get her to sit still while they measured her blood pressure: got her to recite Pi. That kind of freaked the nurse out. :D | ||||||
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October 13th, 2008
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| The local grocery store has a thing where they give fake dollars called "Buddy Bucks" to the kids at the checkout, and then the kids can put those into a robot-arm-grabbing machine that gives them stickers with numbers. Ostensibly one is to collect these as points to cash in for prizes, but Peo is just obsessed with the number stickers. Last time we went, they gave Peo a Buddy Buck but the machine was broken, so we brought it home. Much crying. But today we went back, and I told Peo she could still ask for another one. The cashier asked if she wanted one or two. Peo asked for two, of course. This meant she had three Buddy Bucks to spend. Then, on the last one, the robot claw grabbed two. So she got four stickers. As we went to the car I told her how it was nifty that she got three 1s and one 3, because 1+1+1=3. Peo was amused. Then she shouted at the top of her lungs, echoing over the parking lot, "ONE AND ONE IS TWO! TWO AND TWO MINUS ONE IS THREE!" It took me a minute to realize that she was right. I couldn't get her to repeat it, though. She just kept giggling about it. I don't know if that was a lucky guess, a fluke, or what, because other times we try to get her to understand subtraction, she hasn't really gotten it. Addition she's good with, but she just wants to add even when you say to subtract. So...I don't know if this was awesome freaky fluke or actual computation. Either way, stunningly cool! | ||||||
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October 12th, 2008
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| Well I guess Peo can officially read. Grandma sent her some books and we hadn't read them all to her yet. She just picked up "Cat on the Mat", sat down, and read it aloud. I didn't know how it goes since we hadn't even opened it, so I thought maybe she was just describing pictures or something. But then Corran sat down with her and held it for her to read, and as he pointed to each word she read them. And I've got the video to prove it. Now if I just could find time to deal with photos/videos...I still haven't gotten to her doing 10 digits of Pi from last January, which is so BORING now that she does 24 and is begging for more... | ||||||
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October 7th, 2008
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| Peo is three today! Yay! Happy birthday Peo! I'd post piccies but no time...plus the poor thing has big painful blisters on her heels from her hike on Sunday and that means she's had to go shoeless for a couple of days, meaning if we want to go out (such as the required grocery shopping today) she needs to be carried around. This means everything is going slower than usual, making me busier than expected. Let's hope they clear up by her party on Saturday. So I'll go with last year's birthday icon for now and update next week, after party! | ||||||
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Blatherings
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